There were only two things louder in our house than my father\u2019s laugh. One was the slam of the bedroom door whenever Mom barricaded herself inside and the other was the sound of our rusting station wagon backfiring as it pulled out of the drive. Dad laughed hardest when a story surprised him, and when he let loose, his laugh could rattle your bones.<\/p>\n
Mom was always on the hunt for ways to make Dad laugh, so whenever she hurried us to dinner, it was clear she had a story lined up. She took her time laying out the details, like a zookeeper thrusting her hand into the lion\u2019s cage, waving small pieces of meat, and waiting for her morsels to be devoured. And when Mom told us about the new deli man, she was at the peak of her comedic delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t believe it,\u201d she\u2019d crooned, between sips of her Manhattan. \u201cI almost fell into my cart when I saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGo on,\u201d Dad encouraged, a smile already creeping across his broad face.<\/p>\n
\u201cHannaford\u2019s has hired a one-armed meat man. I didn\u2019t quite notice until I\u2019d already put in my order for ham. But soon enough, I spotted it. There he was, that poor man, grasping for the hock with his good hand, and using his other little nub to hold things steady.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow big was the nub?\u201d Dad asked, eyebrows bouncing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, it was elbow length,\u201d Mom replied, a little soprano sing-song in her voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd did he wear a glove on the nub? A covering of some sort?\u201d Dad was spluttering and snorting by that point.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh no. He was fully unsheathed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad unleashed a torrent of laughter that shook the table and set our drinks swaying as if we were ferrying through a swell.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to wonder how he lost the arm in the first place,\u201d Dad said, his veiny face flooded, his big, hairy hands pounding the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I did. But I was too mesmerized as he braced the ham in his slicer and peeled off half a pound for my basket. I mean, I tried not to stare, but his little nub was like a magnet.\u201d<\/p>\n
They went on like that for the rest of dinner and I laughed along. I laughed because they were laughing, but even then, something strange swirled in my stomach. I kept thinking about how heavy a whole ham must be. My eyes bounced between my parents\u2019 flushed faces, my presence an afterthought in the afterglow of Mom\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
Of course, every noise in our household eventually led to another. And the noise that echoed loudest from that evening wasn\u2019t Dad\u2019s laughter. It was the sound of Dad\u2019s cursing that woke me around midnight. There was chaos in the kitchen. Dad had dropped a glass jug of milk and when I peeked out my door, I could see Mom, on her hands on knees, picking up the largest shards of glass and wiping up the spill while Dad leaned over her and continued to rummage in the fridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s that ham you said you bought? I want a sandwich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom replied in a sleepy voice. \u201cWhat ham?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one-armed ham,\u201d he said, patting her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I didn\u2019t bring that home,\u201d she said, standing up with a wad of wet paper towels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy the hell not?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI left it on a shelf somewhere in the store.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t going to eat that. Not after his nub had touched it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you kidding?\u201d Dad smashed the fridge door closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re the one who called it crazy,\u201d Mom said, meticulously sweeping up the rest of the broken glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing crazy is that you went to the store and we still don\u2019t have ham.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen go to the fucking store yourself,\u201d Mom yelled, dropping the broom so that the handle clattered to the floor. I didn\u2019t see what happened next, but both my parents started screaming. I heard a chair tip over and then Mom\u2019s slippers running in my direction, so I closed my door just before my parents\u2019 bedroom door slammed.<\/p>\n
Then there was a quiet sobbing from across the hall, and a few minutes later, the sound of a shot. It was only Dad driving off, but it may as well have been a bullet, because that was the night the laughter died. After that, things in the house got louder and quieter all at the same time. There was more screaming. And more bitter silence. Mom had stopped feeding Dad jokes. He still laughed, but his laugh had morphed from a glorious thunder to a hollowed-out clanking\u2014a performative sound effect without any heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There were only two things louder in our house than my father\u2019s laugh. One was the slam of the bedroom door whenever mom barricaded herself inside and the other was the sound of our rusting station wagon backfiring as it pulled out of the drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[702,73,27,3328,3657,3655,3654,22,3656,52],"class_list":["post-20311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-alcohol","tag-childhood","tag-fathers","tag-fighting","tag-ham","tag-laughing","tag-memories","tag-mothers","tag-one-armed-man","tag-parents","writer-coleman-bigelow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20773,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20311\/revisions\/20773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}